The Fall of the Human Race

Chapter Three is about the fall of the entire human race and therefore, the need of every human being for the redemption that is in Christ. This chapter is a pivot point in the Bible. If it were to be taken away, the key to understanding the rest of Scripture would be taken away with it. The record of man’s fall provides the key to social, psychological, and economic problems of today, as well as to religion because we live in the midst of two contradictions. On one hand we have tremendous possibilities. Some psychologists say we use only two-tenths of our potential personal abilities. We are aware we are made for something greater. This stems from a profound awareness of our original glory and destiny.

On the other hand we experience a sense of wrongness, frustration, confusion and deep subconscious uneasiness. We wish we could be different, without selfishness, temper or deceit. We feel like God is far away. Or not pleased with us somehow.

This chapter provides the answer to the contradictions of sin within us as well as the promise that provides the way back to deep contentment through a personal relationship with God and an awareness that “He IS pleased with me!”

Genesis 3:1-6  Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?”

² The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, ³ but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’”

⁴ “You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. ⁵ “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

⁶ When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.

A commentator wrote that when God created Adam and Eve in His own image, He intended also that they should progress in spiritual development from immaturity to maturity. This was to be accomplished by their exercise of deliberate choice.

Hebrews 5:14 ¹⁴ But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil.

Man wasn’t created to just love God and obey Him simply because there was no other way of life available to him. Genesis 3 reveals man as having the opportunity and responsibility to exercise his will, to choose deliberately either for God or against God. Such was the test of the two trees. Both trees were intended to be a means of blessing.

Look at Genesis 2:9 again The Lord God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground—trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

And we haven’t read it yet, but Genesis 3:22 says And the Lord God said, “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.”

It would appear that the tree of life was the tree Adam was supposed to eat from. If he had done so Adam would have had eternal life.

But the devil caused Eve to look at the only tree that had a negative command. The tree of knowledge was appointed by God for a moral test for Adam and Eve that would exercise and develop their wills, their intellects and emotions. And give them joy by being obedient to God.

By not eating of that tree man would demonstrate his submission to God by choosing to obey Him. But by exercising his God-allowed right of independence against God, he made sin and disobedience a part of his life experience. His knowledge now of good was that it was unattainable to him. At the same time he also received sin’s wages – death. First, immediate spiritual death and secondly ultimate physical death and thirdly, the “second death” that is a biblical term for hell. So sin did not free him. Just the opposite!

The serpent’s reason for tempting man would seem to be to take from him that dominion over the earth given to man by God. Through the fall of man, the devil became “prince and god of this world”.

1 John 5:19 We know that we are children of God, and that the whole world is under the control of the evil one.

The serpent had a threefold method of temptation:

1.      He brought doubt of God’s love and discontent with present circumstances. “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden?’” He concentrates Eve’s attention upon the one prohibition until she forgets that everything else in the garden is hers. A seed of discontent with God is sown in her heart and this raises a doubt as to whether God really loves her.

2.      The devil pursued his advantage by suggesting that she could sin and get away with it. “You will not surely die.” Until now physical death had no meaning for Adam and Eve since they had never had any experience of it. The devil caused Eve to lose her healthy fear of disobeying God and to doubt His word concerning punishment. Today the devil uses these same tactics when he causes a person to doubt the reality of hell and everlasting punishment. “There’s no such thing; we make our own heaven and hell now.” says man. But Jesus talked about hell more then He did about Heaven!

3.      The devil finally wedged open the door into Eve’s slowly responding heart. He excited her personal ambition to excel. She craved to appear wise and powerful like God and to exert her independent will. “You shall be like God.”

Satan caused Eve to take from his hand what God had planned to give her as a result and reward of obedience. She received the knowledge of good and evil from Satan’s hand and through her choice of evil independence instead of receiving it from God through choice of good dependence. Satan tempts man. Always has and always will. He even tried to tempt Christ in the wilderness.

It Is Finished - Finding Lasting Victory Over Sin

I just finished reading David Wilkerson's book 'It isFinished - Finding Lasting Victory Over Sin'.  His message is basic Christianity, but it’s a message that so many people just don't get.

We can never hear this truth too often. Salvation is not by works. It is through faith alone. Yet Christians try and try and try to be good enough.

Pastor Wilkerson points out that the new covenant was made between God and Jesus. That Jesus would save mankind from their sins. He did this by living a sinless life and dying as a sacrifice for us on the cross and then 3 days later walking out of the tomb. When we try to earn our way into Heaven it's like saying the cross wasn't good enough. But God says it was!

The author also warns Christians not to be stumbling blocks to other believers. Too many churches tell their congregations you must do this or that. Pastor Wilkerson uses what Jesus said in Matthew 18:6-7 6 “If anyone causes one of these little ones—those who believe in me—to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea. 7 Woe to the world because of the things that cause people to stumble! Such things must come, but woe to the person through whom they come!" to show us how serious this is! He was expressing His wrath toward those who teach the cross is not sufficient to save.

Pastor Wilkerson says once we are saved and we are obedient to God it will be God (the Holy Spirit) in us who gives us victory over sin. But we must give up all struggle to get to that point. When we do we will be free. Share this book with people you don't think "get it". They will thank you!

I received this book from the publisher to review. All they asked was that I be honest about what I thought of the book.

Struggling with Sin

More from my lesson from the book The Pursuit of Holiness:

We shouldn’t hide the fact that we struggle with sin because realizing that we do helps us battle it. Even Paul struggled. He wrote in Romans 7:21 “When I want to do good evil is right there with me.”

We have an indwelling propensity to sin inside of us, but now as Christians we also have the Holy Spirit inside who gives us the desire for holiness. So it is a battle.

David in Psalm 139 asked God to “Search me, O God, and know my heart: test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me and lead me in the way everlasting.”

God’s primary means of searching our hearts this way is through His Word. When we read it under the power of the Holy Spirit.

Hebrews 4:12 For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.

So Satan goes after our minds. He deceives us. He helps us reason that something isn’t so bad, or he discourages us into thinking we are hopeless, so why even try.

We have to always be vigilant against sin. Jesus said in Matthew 26:41, “Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation.”

So, you might be wondering, “I thought that the war with sin was won by Christ in His death on the cross so why am I still harassed and often defeated by sin in my heart?”

The author says we must accept the fact that God in His infinite wisdom has seen fit to allow this daily battle with indwelling sin. But He doesn’t leave us to battle it alone. Christianity is not a do it yourself thing. He has made ample provision for us to win the daily skirmishes. It’s not just that we are dead to sin, but we are alive to Christ. That means we are united with Christ and have His priority.

Our reactions to circumstances and trials and temptations are a part of our walk of holiness. Holiness isn’t a series of dos and don’ts, but conformity to the character of God and obedience to the will of God. Accepting with contentment whatever circumstances God allows for us is part of our holy walk. Paul wrote to the Philippians in 4: 11-13: I am not saying this because I am in need, for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. 12 I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. 13 I can do all this through him who gives me strength.

He said he could respond in contentment because Christ gave him the strength to. If you read on in Philippians you’ll see Paul thanking the Philippians for their support. God will send people to help us. He will send us to help others!

Paul said to the Ephesians in 3:20 that God: Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us,

We’ve all resolved a hundred times not to give in to some temptation we keep having, but we do. That’s when Satan comes to us and says, “You might as well give up. You can never overcome sin.” And we can’t on our own. Just knowing that helps! Then we need to rely on the Holy Spirit who is in us to do His work.

Christ's Holiness Part 2

Yesterday I posted about the holiness in Christ from a study I did on book The Pursuit of Holiness. Here's the rest of that thought.

Most Christians really do want to live a holy life, but simply believe they can’t do it. We settle into kind of a mediocre “goodness”, not living in gross sin, but still committing sins pretty much daily. And we find the strong commands of Scripture to live a consistently holy life – frustrating!

We try to stop a certain sin with our own willpower or by praying for it to stop. Then we hear things like, “let go and let God”. That we should just turn our sin over to Christ and rest in His finished work on Calvary. That He will then live His life in us and we’ll experience a life of victory over sin.

And after all our struggle, we like this idea! But after a while, if we are truly honest with ourselves, we discover we’re still losing the sin battle. We still struggle with pride, jealousy, materialism, impatience and lust. We still eat too much, waste our time, criticize each other, lie, etc… all the while hating ourselves for doing it.

Then we wonder why it doesn’t “work” for us! We think we’re unique. That somehow our sinful natures must be worse then others. The author says that Satan works to confuse us on the issue of what God has done for us and what we must do ourselves. And that we have to realize that God has indeed made provision for us to live a holy life, but He also has given us definite responsibilities.

Romans 6:12–14 Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. Do not offer any part of yourself to sin as an instrument of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer every part of yourself to him as an instrument of righteousness. For sin shall no longer be your master, because you are not under the law, but under grace.

Not allowing sin to reign in our mortal bodies is something we have to do. The experience of holiness is not a gift we receive like justification, but something which we are clearly told to work at.

Also, Paul started this verse with therefore, meaning it’s because of something he had just said, which was true. So lets look at (Romans 6:1-12)
1 What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? 2 By no means! We are those who have died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? 3 Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 4 We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.
5 For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly also be united with him in a resurrection like his. 6 For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body ruled by sin might be done away with,[a] that we should no longer be slaves to sin— 7 because anyone who has died has been set free from sin.
8 Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. 9 For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him. 10 The death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God.
11 In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. 12 Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires.

The “therefore” refers back to the fact that we died to sin. What does he mean that we died to sin? Well first we see from these verses that our dying to sin is the result of our union with Christ. Because He died to sin, we died to sin. So that is something Christ has done. Dying to sin means it has no dominion over us. Before we trusted Jesus for our salvation, we were in the kingdom of Satan and sin. We followed the ways of this world.

Paul said in Romans 6:17 that we were slaves to sin.

Everyone who has ever lived, except Christ, was a slave to sin. But our union with Christ takes us out of Satan’s kingdom and into Christ’s kingdom. We used to live for ourselves, not Him. We didn’t want Him to be king of our lives.

Why do we still sin? Because even though we’ve moved to another kingdom, our sinful natures came with us! And they are powerful. Galatians 5:17 For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They are in conflict with each other, so that you are not to do whatever[a] you want.

There’s a battle going on!

We also have strong, sinful habits. We’ll talk about this next time, but a lot of what we do is just habit. And we’ll spend the rest of our lives taking off these habits and putting on the habits of holiness. Through little (and big!) choices we make everyday.

Also we still live in a world that’s populated by slaves of sin. And the world tries to conform us to its own sinful mold. So though we’ve been delivered from the kingdom of sin and its rule we have not been delivered from its attacks.

That’s why Paul warns us to be on guard, to not let our still sinful nature take over. We have to keep reminding ourselves that we are no longer slaves. We can stand up to sin and say no to it. As slaves we sinned without even thinking about it. As Christians we are free and make a choice to sin or not. God gave us the potential for resisting, but the responsibility for resisting is ours!


"Dear Lord, You are the true goal of our lives. In the varied business of this day let us never lose sight of You. Show us how to make each of our activities a stepping stone to You. If any chore or habit of ours leads in another direction, show us what it is and help us to remove it."

Holiness is in you

Continuing in the lesson from the book The Pursuit of Holiness:

Romans 6:14 For sin shall no longer be your master, because you are not under the law, but under grace.

To be holy is to be morally blameless. It means to be separate from sin and therefore consecrated to God. In 1st Thessalonians Paul used the term in contrast to a life of immorality and impurity.

To live a holy life is to live a life in conformity to the moral precepts of the Bible and in contrast to the sinful ways of the world.

According to Ephesians 4:22-24 you are to: throw off your old sinful nature and your former way of life, which is corrupted by lust and deception. Instead, let the Spirit renew your thoughts and attitudes. Put on your new nature, created to be like God—truly righteous and holy.

So, if holiness is so basic to Christian life, why don’t we experience it more in daily living? Why do so many Christians feel constantly defeated in their struggle with sin? Why is it still hard to tell the church from the world? The author says there are 3 problem areas:

1. Our attitude toward sin is more self-centered than God-centered.

We are more concerned with our own “victory” over sin than we are about the fact that our sins grieve the heart of God. All sin is against God. When we sin, we are despising His authority.

The prodigal son got it right when he said, “I have sinned against heaven and before thee.” So did David when he said, “Against Thee and Thee only have I sinned.”

2. We misunderstand “living by faith” to mean that no effort at holiness is required on our part. But we have to take responsibility for our sins.

3. We don’t take some sin seriously. In Song of Solomon 2:15 it says it is “the little foxes that ruin the vineyards.” It’s compromise on the little issues that lead to greater downfalls. If God calls something a sin, whether it’s big or tiny, we call it a sin too.

Jesus, The Final Sacrifice

There are 350 references to blood in the Bible. There are almost 300 uses for the word sacrifice. Blood sacrifice is central in God’s plan to forgive His people for their sins. All of this points to the final sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

At the very beginning God had perfect fellowship with Adam and Eve. He gave them only one boundary: do not eat the fruit of one specific tree in the garden. He told them if they ate this fruit, they would die. This is important – the wages of sin is death.

They didn’t need to eat the fruit. Everything they needed was provided for them. But they did, and then were embarrassed when they looked at each other and realized they were naked. And the sin changed their relationship with God too. When He came into the garden, instead of running to Him, they hid.

God slaughtered innocent animals to make clothing to cover their nakedness and shame. Adam and Eve had never seen death before this. Never seen blood. This was a foreshadowing of an innocent third party killed for someone else. They saw that sin was very serious. Sin is a violation of the holiness of God.

The Jews made all kinds of sacrifices over and over and over.

Even pagan people used animal sacrifices to placate an angry god. They figured if they did something bad and a god had any concern for what was right or just, that sooner or later they were going to get in trouble for what they had done. To stop the god from being angry with them they decided they needed to offer him or her a sacrifice. If it was a small sin, it would be a small sacrifice. If it was a big sin it would be a big sacrifice.

So ancient religions understood sacrifice. Later they should have been able to understand the concept of Jesus as a sacrifice when it was presented to them.
But in pagan rituals, sacrifices were made by the people trying to placate a god and this was their error. In Christianity it is never the people who take the initiative or make the sacrifice. It is God who makes the way by which His wrath may be averted. And He did it because He loves us so much. “For God SO LOVED the world, that He gave His only begotten Son.”

What trips people up in understanding this, is it’s not the act (the sacrifice) that wipes out our sins. It’s the fact that God said that the act would do this and we BELIEVE Him.

We were told about the perfect sacrifice in Isaiah 53:1-7. The sacrifice would not be a lamb, but a person. And he would free people from their sins and save them from judgment. Hundreds of years later when John the Baptist saw Jesus in the crowd, he said, “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” He was telling us that Jesus is the ultimate Lamb, the innocent third party who would shed His blood as the payment for sinful people.

Jesus’ crucifixion was no accident. It was planned since the beginning of time. He went willingly. And He did it for us. He paid a great price. Anytime we think we have to do something to get saved, we take away from what Jesus did.

Why We Still Sin

Kevin A. Miller the executive vice president of Christianity Today International and assistant pastor at Church of the Resurrection in Glen Ellyn, Illinois wrote a very helpful article called “Why Can’t I Shake My Sins?” You can read it at Christianity Today:

Why Can't I Shake My Sins?

1st John 3:9

1 John 3:9 “Those who are born again because of what God has done will not keep on sinning. God's very nature remains in them. They can't go on sinning. They have been born again because of what God has done.”

When we are born again we are given a fresh start in God’s family. God gives us power over sin. Again, it’s not that we will never sin again – we just won’t have the nature of continually sinning or treating sin lightly.

Because remember, earlier in this letter John said if we say we have no sin we deceive ourselves and in chapter 1 verses 8-10 he urges us to confess our sins and goes on to say that when we do sin we have an advocate with the Father in Jesus Christ.

Being sin free is our goal, which will be realized in the world to come and right now we are in the process of getting there.

1st John 3:3-8

1 John 3:3-8 “Everyone who has this hope in him purifies himself, just as he is pure. Everyone who sins breaks the law; in fact, sin is lawlessness. But you know that he appeared so that he might take away our sins. And in him is no sin. No one who lives in him keeps on sinning. No one who continues to sin has either seen him or known him.

Dear children, do not let anyone lead you astray. He who does what is right is righteous, just as he is righteous. He who does what is sinful is of the devil, because the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil's work.”

The man who knows that God is at the end of the road will make all of life a preparation to meet His God.

What do we know about Christians and sin? That we still sin; we just don’t enjoy it as much any more! Who John is talking about here is the person who continues to sin and isn’t sorry, doesn’t confess and won’t ask forgiveness. Our victory is not complete and we still struggle with temptation and sin.

My application Bible suggests three ways we can find victory over a prevailing sin:

1. Seek power from the Holy Spirit and from God’s Word
2. Stay away from tempting circumstances. Remember Joseph ran from Potiphor’s wife! If you are tempted by money, don’t volunteer to be the treasurer of your club! If you are married and someone of the opposite sex is looking good to you, you may have to cut that person out of your life.
3. Seek the help of the church or have a Christian friend who will hold you accountable and pray for you. And vice versa.

John says if we don’t abide in Christ, sin comes into our lives. This just means we need to continually remember His presence and deliberately walk the way we know He wants us to. It’s at least harder to sin if we picture Jesus standing right there.

1st John 2:1-2

1st John 2:1-2 “My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. And if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; and He Himself is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for those of the whole world.”

A commentator once wrote that there are hardly any other two verses in the New Testament, which so succinctly set out the work of Christ. We don’t treat sin lightly even though we know God will forgive us because we’ve already learned that to know God goes hand in hand with obedience to Him. We know that God doesn’t want us to sin and we know that an obedient life follows the example of Christ and He was sinless.

The work of Christ that is spelled out in these verses is: He is our advocate with the Father. There is a story that what Christ does can be likened to a courtroom, where Satan, the great accuser is telling God all of our sins and demanding the death penalty. Christ is our defender who tells God that the punishment was already taken care of. The price has been paid and we aren’t eligible to be tried again. That would be double jeopardy.

But, even more than that the word advocate comes from the Greek word parakletos, which also translates as comforter, counselor, helper and supporter. It was such a common word that other languages back then didn’t translate it. It was the same word in Syriac, Egyptian, Arabic and Ethiopic. The Jews adopted this word and used it for someone to plead another’s cause. They used it as the opposite of the accuser. They even called their sin offering “a man’s parakletos before God” meaning that the sin offering pleads a man’s cause with God.

The word came into the Christian’s ordinary vocabulary and sometimes was used as “one who lends his presence to friends.” And that’s what Jesus is. Our friend.

He is also the propitiation for our sins. Propitiation comes from sacrifice and the Jews understand this better then the Gentiles. The great aim of all religions is fellowship with God. To know God as a friend and to come into His presence without fear. It is a personal relationship with God.

The great problem is sin and the fact it breaks our fellowship with God and it makes it impossible to enter the presence of God. It is to meet this problem that all sacrifice arises. By sacrifice God allows fellowship to be restored. The Jews offered sacrifices morning, noon and night. Over and over again. The idea is that God is placated by the sacrifice. Pacified. Some deed is performed that what Jesus did, placated God. Satisfied Him, so that He, Jesus, is our propitiation. What He did took away our guilt and our defilement and allowed us to come into God’s presence clean and pure.

And John says Jesus did this for the whole world. There is no limit to the grace and love of God or to the effectiveness and the work and sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

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1st John 1:8-10

1st John 1:8-10 “If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar and His word is not in us.”

If we say that we have no sin we deceive ourselves. Men are sinful. All men! If we confess our sins, we can rely on God in His righteousness to forgive us our sins.

What John means by God’s righteousness is, God doesn’t lie. God would never break His word and He said if we repent and ask forgiveness He will forgive. But, we have to truly repent, which means we don’t plan on doing that same sin again!

We confess because by admitting our sins and receiving Christ’s cleansing, we are:

1. Agreeing with God that our sin truly is sin and that we are willing to turn from it. We make a commitment not to continue to sin.
2. We are ensuring we aren’t trying to hide sin from God or ourselves.
3. We are recognizing our tendency to sin and relying on Christ’s power to overcome it.

Snake on a stick

I love the "ah-ha" moments in the Bible when something in the New Testament really explains something in the Old Testament. There is a story in Numbers 21:4-9 about how the Israelites were grumbling about God and Moses. God sent deadly snakes among the people of Israel because of their sin. The people asked Moses to pray to God for relief and God told Moses to make an image of a poisonous serpent out of bronze and set it high on a pole so that "everyone who is bitten shall look at it and live."

In the book of John 3:14-15 Jesus uses this story to prepare Nicodemus for the revelation He was about to give Him concerning His redemptive work on a cross. He said, "as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of man be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him may have eternal life."

The Israelites would never have thought of the bronze snake as their salvation from the biting serpents. Looking at the very thing that was killing them to save them.

What the Israelites were told to do in the desert we are told to do with the cross. Sin is the serpents biting us. Jesus became sin on a cross. He told Nicodemus that He would be so identified with sin, death and punishment that He would be lifted up like a snake."

2 Corinthians 5:21 says "For our sakes He made Him who knew no sin - sin, that in Him we might become the rightousness of God."

Like the Israelites with the snake, it's something we would never have thought of ourselves.

In 1 Corinthians 1:18 Paul wrote, "For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are saved it is the power of God." God deliberately chose something people see as folly so we can know salvation is God's doing. Not ours! He has created a way for us to live with Him for eternity. Believe it.

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